Driving Miss Daisy (and all the other Dukes)

Went to see Dukes (or perhaps Doooks) of Hazard tonight (seem to be watching a lot of movies at the moment - which is nice). On the way to the cinema nature treated us to a very impressive special effects show of thunder, lightning and torrential rain. Once we had got there, waded through the car park and found our seats it turned out that the film was OK. I mean, nobody is going to go to a movie version of a TV series like Dukes of Hazard and expect anything that special, but it did the job.

Things have changed a bit though in Hazard county though. Bo Duke has turned into a raving loon and Luke Duke now looks old enough to be his dad. Daisy is much more agressive than I remember and Sheriff Hogg has slimmed down a lot. But the car remains the same, and the noise it makes when they rev that Dodge Charger is about worth the price of the tickets alone. They must have got through quite a few cars.

If you go and see the film, stick around for the end titles where they show what happened to an awfull lot of vehicles. Take-offs usually went OK. Landings usually made the car shatter into little bits, leap over the intersection or dive into the bushes. Or all three. But a happy ending and a bunch of car chases, how can it go wrong?

Would this work?

Proposed email to all academic staff:

The sergeant looked down at the clipboard in his hands. Ahead of him stretched a line of people, desparation showing in their eyes as they waited for their chance to plead for the last few places in the sole remaining star transporter that would soon be leaving forever the doomed planet earth.

"And why do you thing you should be allowed to escape certain death?" he asked the nervous figure in front of him.

"Er, well, when Rob Miles asked for my preference for lab. demonstrators for the new semester timetable I gave him the information straight away" came the trembling response.

"Good enough for me" replied the sergeant, standing aside and allowing one more person through to salvation.

So give me the information please folks, you never know when it might come in handy...

Product Placement

Went to see "The Island" tonight. It is a "wham bam" action adventure with Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson as clones (the product) escaping from the laboratory where they were grown as walking spare part repositories for their "sponsors". It takes a little while to get really going, but once it is under way there is a whole lot happening, including a lot of chasing.

Now I'm not particularly against chasing. I spent a lot of time aged five and six enjoying games of tag. But watching other people being chased for long periods of time does get a little wearing, even with the special effects and jazzy camera moves. You start to think "either they get caught or they get away, can we please cut beyond the chase and find out what happens next..".

Anyhoo, a pretty good film. It doesn't make any great philosophical points, the thing that it brought home most strongly to me is that people with small, rimless, glasses who speak with an english accent are very likely to be baddies, and if they are played by Sean Bean the probability rises to 100%.

The most important question for me though was this; If you have invented a machine that can manufacture Scarlett Johanssons, why would you stop at just making one?

Progress Bar

Progress Bar
Originally uploaded by RobMiles.

I spent a big chunk of today installing software. The way I see it, watching progress bars is kind of like work (in that something is working at the time) but you don't actually have to do anything - which is nice.

Time for a New Camera

If all goes to plan I shall be going away in a couple of weeks to America. Of course this means that I need to buy a new camera. The old one is very nice, but rather old, and I feel I deserve better. I have a big, special camera too, but I don't want to lug that around the 'states.

So today I did more damage to the overdraft in the quest for the perfect picture. The one I've got is a gem though. It is small, shiny, silver and takes super pictures. I've been wandering round the house in search of things to photograph:


IKEA Orchids

There are some more pictures on my Flickr account.

How to Make Your Life Difficult

There are a number of "Robert's Laws" that I have formulated over the years. Most of them have to do with computers:

• Any Given Computer is Too Slow
• Thinking About Saving Makes Your Program Crash

..but I do have some more general purpose ones:

• Every now and then, for no reason that you can ever figure out, something really horrible will happen to you.
• Every now and then, for no reason that you can ever figure out, something really nice will happen to you.
• An infallible way to make your life more difficult is to try and do someone a favour.

The last one sprang to mind today. Some time back, in agreement with rule two above, number one wife allowed me to buy a nice big LCD screen for my guvvy room. So we thought we'd offer the TV it replaced to a worthy home. In accordance with rule number three I offered it to a friend of mine without checking what number one wife had done with it. Result, a chum who has had the prospect of 28 inches of telly goodness snatched from under his nose. To make matters worse, it is the same chum whom I offered a telly last year, only to have the telly in question to toes up before I could deliver it. I hope Ian will keep speaking to me....

The View up the stairs

I've been taking pictures around the place again. This is the view up the staircase to my office. With a lovely blue sky right at the top.

Burn Baby Burn

I've been burning things again. Nothing dangerous or fire based, just EPROMS to go to Japan for a certain brewery. An EPROM (Eraseable, Programmable Read Only Memory) is a memory chip used to hold data, in this case my wonderfully wraught program code. They have a window in the top where you shine UV light to erase them and you have to use a special programmer to put stuff into them. The ones I'm using hold about the same amount of data as a 10 pixel wide column on your video screen (i.e not a lot).

Just look at those bits..

EPROMS are hard to work with, difficult to put into the circuit boards and completely superceeded by EEPROM stuff which doesn't need the window (but at least you can look at the chips in these babies). But people will pay me to make them. And soon the code in them will be hard at work putting date stamps on bottles of beer. I love the thought that, even as I write this text there is are programs of mine running in breweries all over the world, putting datestamps on bottles of beer.

I've also written code that flushes toilets. But that is a different story...

Back on the job

I've only been away for a long weekend, but things were pretty busy today. Dealt with loads of students who are writing project reports; marked a whole bunch of practical work; wrote some code for our reachout project and answered a slew of emails and forum posts.

It is great to be here(and I'm not being ironic).

Back to the real world - via cheap plates

Had to come back to the real world today. Went via the IKEA store, who were having a celebration which involved selling things for 10 pence. Including plates, clocks, dishes and some things that we can't presently identify. But for less than the price of a mars bar, who cares. So we got two.

Spent the least amount we ever have, and brought back the most.

Bronte Country with Added Words

Today we trundled off to take a look at "Bronte Country"(tm). This is the birthplace of the great literature produced by the sisters Anne, Emma and Charlotte. I've not read much of it myself; apparently there are no car chases, alien abductions or plots involving Westminster Cathedral.

However, the trip itself was very enjoyable, unlike the lot of the Brontes themselves. Their lives were actually pretty tragic, and horribly short. A little while after they had all succumbed to various illnesses a government man was despatched to take a look at the state of the village. He reported that an open sewer running down the main street of the village, surrounded by rotting rubbish, was probably not condusive to healthy living and a long life. The upshot was proper drainage and a decent water supply, but it came too late for the writing sisters who professed such a strong love for the neighbourhood that probably killed them.

Haworth is a great place to visit. The little village main street is full of interesting shops and the vicarage where the Brontes lived was very well preserved and has a great atmosphere. I've put some pictures on Flickr if you are really interested..

Then back to the hotel for the night. In an attempt to prove my literary qualities I took on number one wife at Scrabble. And lost.

In Hot Water

Went up town today. In a record shop which cannot be named (but the girl who it is named after can't get out that much) they have a huge window full of Playstation Portable boxes in a rather attractive arrangement. "That would make a nice picture for both my blog readers" thinks I. So out comes the little camera and I dash off a couple of pictures. Then a man comes up to me and asks if I have permission to take pictures. Of course I haven't, but I say I have anyway, since number one son told me to do it. "Is it written permission?" comes the response. Well, number one son hasn't written anything down, and so probably not. "I only wanted the picture for my blog" I said piteously. Do you know, the fellow didn't know what a blog was. Young people today.

I wonder if I dare go back into that shop ever again?


(and I've just discovered that the Blogger spell checker doesn't know the word "blog". Now that is scary.)

Jack Attack

previously on 24......

CTU Expendable : "Jack, are you sure that this clock is right?"

[BANG...BANG...WHOOOSH...BANG]

CTU Expendable : "uuuuuurghhhh"

Jack : "If only I'd got here sooner..."

Scary Post

Today we were all scared of the postman. He came up the path, pushed a bunch of fat envelopes through the letterbox and then strolled next door. We just sat cowering in the living room. For today was results day. The day that number one daughter finds out if the last two years of solid effort have been in vain, and where she is spending the next three years of her life.

Finally we dared open up some of the envelopes to discover that all is well. Good grades all round and a chance to spend three years in York as the prize. In a few months number one wife and I will be a childless couple. Of course the places that the kids (as I still dare to call them occasionally) have gone to have around the shortest teaching periods ever which means that they will be back in a startling short time. But it will still be a bit strange to have the TV stay on the same channel for more than 20 seconds at a time, and to find that the biscuit barrel still has some chocolate digestives left in it.....

Choc Flic Rox

Went to see "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" tonight. It has had mixed reviews, but we ignored them and went anyway. And what a good move it turned out to be. Very good film. Lush visuals, very inventive, good acting and a happy ending. What more can you ask?

Write them thar words

Writing words today. In between writing programs. In between seeing programs that I have written eat aformentioned words and refuse to spit them out again. Number one son and I are writing some course material. Of course, as true computer professionals, when given a task we spring into action and immediately device and perform a complex set of displacement activities, which are more fun than the actual work but don't necessarily get us anywhere.

In this case we are devising a tool which will make it easier to write the words. The tool will be a wonderous thing, able to track versions, create websites, leap tall buildings etc etc. At the moment it sort of works. That is it makes me think that I've made it work and then swallows all my beautiful text. It how has a large and prominent save button. Which I press around every thirty seconds....

The kind of good news is that it is now useful. Which means that we need to do the actual work I suppose.

The Quest for the Best Picture of them All

I've, kind of, bought this, well, er, big LCD screen. It works a treat on the Media PC that I, er, kind of bought, at Christmas. I've also, er, kind of, bought this digital TV tuner for the Media PC which means that I can get rid of the nasty, noisy analogue TV signal (which actually gives the best picture) and replace it with the graphical certainty of computer data.

Except that I can't get digital ITV. Our TV aerial, although very good for birds to sit on (one of them sat on it when we had the gas fire on to get toasty warm, fell asleep from the fumes and woke up right behind the fireplace with an awfull headache. What fun that was - but I digress) is no good for actually pulling in the signal. Especially digital TV.

So number one son and I toddled off to buy a wide band aluminium extrusion with a large number of elements. We got this thing home, assembled it and fitted it in the loft. Before I went to the trouble of threading the wire all through the nastiness which is our loft I directly wired it up to make sure it worked, which it did. So it was out with the cordless drill and into the deepest recesses of the eaves to get the wires into place. And of course once I'd done this it didn't work. Life is unfair sometimes. And so it was out again to get a booster amplifier to get the signal up to a level which actually works. Most of the time. Unless the wind is in the wrong position and the trees have leaves on them. Such is the price of being a pioneer.

Possession is Nine Tenths

Bought a real, proper, Compact Disk last week. Normally I don't do this, because my wonderful Napster thingy lets me download any "bangin' new toons" for free. But this one wasn't on the network, so I had to actually buy a shiny silver disk in a box. I quite enjoyed the experience. It was nice to haver a proper sleeve with nice artwork and some kind of resale value.

The music (Speak for Yourself by Imogen Heap) is great. I got to wondering if, since I've actually paid real money for this record and got a physical artifact, if I will listen to it more.

Turn it off again

In Hull we are blessed in that we have our own telephone company. This means that phones are generally cheaper to use and we have had revolutionary things like untimed local calls for ages and ages. However, the phone company are now changing the way that you pay for your phone lines, which means that I now can't really afford our second number.

We got it ages ago when you had to use one of these quaint little modem things to warble your way onto the internet. After having free and frank discussions with number one wife, who made unreasonable demands like wanting to use the phone every now and then to actually talk to people, I/we decided that a second phone line - which was installed for free - was an equitable solution (and stopped me from having the handset shoved somewhere where holding a conversation would have been difficult in the extreme).

Nowadays we have that new fangled broadband thingy, and only need the one line. Previously I've just paid a small amount per quarter for the second phone with the intention of perhaps using it for a fax machine or something later. But now rental and phone calls are being bundled together in a way that means I would get to pay for lots of calls I don't make anyway. So the phone has to go. Unfortunately that is the phone with the broadband on (are you still with me) and so I went off down town with the mission to swap the broadband over and kill the phone line.

You might think that if you were a phone company who'd just made changes to your charging scheme that would affect all your customers, many of whom might want to talk to you about the way their bills have gone from a fiver to twenty quid, you would put extra people on the desk on a Saturday morning.

You might think that one of the assistants, noting the huge queue of gently fuming customers, might decide not to stroll off and take his tea break - treating us all to a cheery wave as he left us down to two operatives.

You might think loads of sensible things. But of course not everybody else does. The good news is that the person I dealt with was friendly and helpful. And that at some point in the future all the things I want should happen. Here's hoping.

Return to Hull and Spoons

Came back from out little trip away today. The house was still standing, and still the right way up. Which is good. I always worry about going away. I don't actually go as far as count all the spoons before leaving, but I guess it is just a matter of time (actually I think I probably know almost exactly how many spoons we've got - not being over endowed in the spoon department chez Miles).

American museum

If you are ever in Bath (as opposed to in the bath) you could do a lot worse than drop round to the American Museum there. The country house itself is hugely impressive, the museum dedicated to early American life is very interesting but for me the grounds are by far the best feature. We go there whenever we are down in the area and it is just a wonderful place to visit.

Strong Nerves and Trend Setting

Drove down to Bristol today. Did a really brave thing, in that I actually used the electric window that I mended when we went into a car park. Bearing in mind that we were over 200 miles from home this was really quite something. And it worked. Much to my relief. I'm wondering if I'll ever get to a happy state with that repair....

Visited "The Only Shop In The Country Which Sells Clothes That Fit Me" and paid over the odds (i.e. their sale prices) for some trousers and stuff. I am now just so stylish. One of the few people beige looks good on (or so I tell myself). The good thing about clothes that you get from TOSITCWSCTFM is that that they are well ahead of their time, in that they will come into fashion at some point in the future. Or maybe not.

Darth Tator

Yesterday in York I got a "Darth Tator" for number one daughter. After the Lego Darth Vader that she got me it seemed the least I could do.

Penguin of Death and other stories

Went to York today on a shopping trip. Had a very nice day and could not resist buying a "Penguin of Death" mug. You can find out more about the man behind the madness here:

http://www.edwardmonkton.com/index.php

Very strange, and very funny.

Trend Setter

I met some people today who didn't know what a blog is. And some of them were considerably younger than me. Surprising. I wonder if this means that I am a trend stetter? I told them all about my blog and, if they happen upon this rubbish, then welcome...

Twang!

Well, it had to happen. My carefully fettled repair to the car windows broke. The sequence was "Up - Down - Up - Down - twang - Down - Down - Down".

Not good. Fortunately I was at home, and performing stress tests on the thing, and so we weren't stuck any where. So I regrouped, did some thinking and now I can present my infallible "how to fix the windows on Rob's car" guide:

1. Remove entire door panel, whilst muttering to yourself under your breath that "You didn't think you'd have to do this again, darn, darn, darn"
2. Remove window winding mechanism and note that the cable has come out of the handy homebrew ending which you made out of an old terminal block and which turned out not to be strong enough. Reflect on how poor your forward planning was.
3. Take entire assembly into garage and ponder on how to improve matters.
4. Decide to double loop the cable around the block to produce an unburstable and solid fiting which cannot be removed.
5. Do this.
6. Find that you have not threaded the cable through the outer sheath and spring fitting prior to fitting unburstable end.
7. Say a naughty word.
8. Remove the fitting which cannot be removed, lacerating one finger whilst doing this.
9. Refit the irremovable fitting again.
10. Reassemble the drive cables and find that you have put the outer sheath on wrong way round.
11. Say another naughty word. Twice.
12. Find that you can't get the cable through the sheath any more because you have bent it about so much that the end is frayed. Lacerate thumb whilst doing this.
13. Get out wire cutters to make clean new end.
14. Remember that your wire cutters don't actually cut wire. They are just two pieces of crushed up silver paper which are labelled wire cutters.
15. Reflect that you don't get a very good 100 piece toolkit for 10 quid.
16. Recall that the next door neigbours, from whom you borrowed the wire cutters last time, are now in Amsterdam.
17. Finally cut the wire and fit everything together. Lacerate other thumb whilst doing this.
18. Put the entire thing together and make the window go up and down successfully twenty times.
19. Refix door panel, and put a small wedge in the glove box so that if everything breaks when we are out I can always wedge the window up.

Demob Happy

This is my last day in work for a while. I'm having a week of well earned holiday with my loving family (editors note - some of the preceding sentence is actually true).

A Must See

Book now for the latest summer blockbuster. One of America's finest actors in a tale of a man forced to choose between the passion of his life and doing the right thing. Set in the frantic world of girl's football a referee must choose between his heart or his head. After a blatent professional foul does he show her the red card, or keep her love for him alive? Al Pacino stars in "Sent off a woman".

Bad for my Blood Pressure

Spent a huge chunk of yesterday evening and all of this morning sorting out the electric windows in the "big car". Wot fun. Turns out that the cable had rusted, jammed, and then destroyed itself winding round the pulley. I can imagine the design meeting in France around 10 years ago:

Engineer: "I 'ave used the stainless steel in the weendow regulatore to pull the weendows urp and down".
Accountant: "But eef you use the cheaper steel wire eet will save a couple of euros per auto and make us reecher."
Engineer: "Oui. But wire ordinare will rust after a while and jam up, causing the weendow to get sturk."
Accountant: "Eh bien. Then the customere (or suckere as nous can call him) will then be forced to spend boucoups de cash with us to purchase a replacement. I put it to you that thees is a good idea."
Engineer : (thinking about his femme, kids and le mortgage and what would happen to them if he loses his travail) "OK. Have it votre way."

There is no way I'm going to spend 220 smackers just because the people that made my car used cheap materials. Particularly as they are the ones that get my cash. So today number one son and I spent literally ages fighting with the stupid device to replace the broken wire inside with two nice shiny ones originally designed for bicycle brakes. Cost six pounds in all.

It took a lot of effort, lots of heartache, skimmed knuckles, swearing and numerous twangy failures. But now we are pretty sure we've fixed the window. We just daren't use it....

Dingley Dell Do the Business

After my tries and tribulations with the folks down at Dingley last week it was a great surprise to discover that all my equipment has now arrived on campus. The only mistake that they had actually made was to read the letter I as the digit 1 on our order, which confused the order finding system no end. The stuff that arrived is just what I wanted, including a beefy server for my new classroom installation and a couple of Dell Axims for demonstrator marking (if I ever get round to producing the software).

Doors are complicated

What's in a door? Quite a lot as it turns out. Tonight number one son and I spent a happy couple of hours stripping down the car door in search of the cause of "Windows - non moving version". I reckon there is more electrical compexity in this door than there was in the whole of my old Mini. There are four motors, a heater, a whole bunch of switches and heaven knows what else.

The good news is that we managed to dismantle the door and put it back together without causing any lasting damage - at least not to the car. The bad news is that we don't think that we can fix the problem. We need to remove the window glass to get the regulator out. The manual says that to remove the glass the first thing you do is lower the window to around 3/4 down and then start work. Bit tricky to do this if the window is stuck in the up position.....

We reckon that the only way to attack the problem is to cut the thin wire which is used to pull the window up and down. Of course, as soon as we do that we are deep into recovery mode and it would help at that point to have a spare assembly. Which we don't have. And which costs 220 quid. Ho hum. Any ideas folks.